Interests of farmers, consumers high on govt agenda: Paswan

Slamming the Opposition’s allegations that the NDA government is working in favour of the corporate sector, Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan on Monday stressed that the interests of farmers and consumers were high on the government’s agenda. He added that significant improvement had been made in food grain management and consumer welfare during the government’s first year in office.

Paswan said the government had taken a slew of initiatives to improve food grain management during the past one year. He said: “Additional storage capacity of more than 43,480 lakh MTs has been created in remote areas, especially the North East, to keep food grains’ allocation in advance at least for three months.”

“Innovative experiments like shipping of rice from Andhra (Pradesh) to Tripura through Bangladesh waterways and Andhra to Kerala through sea route have been made. About 20 lakh tonne additional modern storage capacity is being created in the shape of ‘silos’ and damage/ leakage of FCI stocks has been brought down significantly to .004 <g data-gr-id="12">per cent</g>,” said Paswan.